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The Minister for Children, Roderic O’Gorman, has responded to complaints about plans to seal the file of the Mother and Baby Homes Commission (MBHC) for 30 years.
The Investigation Commission’s 2020 records bill (Mother and Baby Homes and Certain Related Matters) will be debated on the Seanad this week with the MBHC which will publish the findings of its five-year investigation on October 30.
The Justice for Magdalenes group and the Adoption Rights Alliance said in a statement that the sealing of the file “means that no one will be able to access your personal records. [or information] about their missing relatives or babies who are buried in nameless graves. “
The statement continued: “All administrative records will also be retained, showing how the abusive system of forced family separation was handled.
“It will not be possible to question the findings of the Investigation Commission, do further investigations or hold the criminals accountable.”
Minister O’Gorman said the proposed bill is “necessary to preserve access to invaluable information now and in the future, and not to put it out of reach, as has been reported.”
In a statement, it said that the MBHC was created under the Commissions of Inquiry Act of 2004.
Minister O’Gorman said: “The whole premise of the 2004 Act, which we are obliged to follow, is that investigations are conducted in private.
“That confidentiality applies to the evidence and records collected by the investigation. Allowing testimony to be freely given is essential.
“Earlier this year, the MBHC informed us that it had created a database to track who was in the primary households of mothers and babies, but it did not believe that it had a legal basis to transfer that database and would be required by law to compose the valuable information that we are trying to preserve now.
“This bill provides for this and allows the database to be transferred to Tusla (with whom most of the original records are already kept). It prevents the information from being effectively destroyed and will allow access to that information according to the existing laws “.
Minister O’Gorman continued: “The 2004 Act also requires such records to be sealed for a period of 30 years pending their transfer to the National Archives.
“This provision was already in force before the establishment of the Commission.
“The Commission must present its final report and be dissolved into law on October 30. This bill must be approved and become law before its dissolution.
“Failure to act will result in the transfer of an incomplete file and the database will be effectively destroyed and will not be available for information and tracking.”
O’Gorman said he remains “absolutely committed to addressing the larger issue of providing a new architecture surrounding access to information and birth tracking – this will be advanced soon.”
Human rights professor Dr. Maeve O’Rourke, who campaigns on behalf of single mothers and their children to help uncover the truth about what happened to them, said the minister “should inform the public about what kind of records “is intended to seal. 30 years.
She said: “They are likely to include countless state and institutional administrative records, which are crucial to rebuilding how the forced family separation system worked.”
He said the time has come for a “mature and holistic response to our history, one that makes us the nation we want and really could be.”
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